Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]

[Voltekka.2375]

Dunno, it kinda feels - to me at least- dishonest to make easy raid mode. Dishonest to those who worked hard for their rotations, for the time they have put into wiping again and again and again, for the cost in food +gear and for the resources they have put into everything. I do not raid, mind you. But it would feel that theyre being cheated on, being treated unfairly, when people put much less effort to get EXACTLY what others got through hard work. Yes, it is a videogame and all, but hard work is hard work, regardless. It just... Doesnt feel right.

Edit:The vote was, sadly, a misclick

[Ohoni.6057]

@"nia.4725" said:Anyway. Don't you think it's extremely easy to get exotic equipment with the correct stats? What I mean with correct is: a DPS player who does not use toughness and vitality stats.

The thing with casual players is, they probably aren't aware of what the "correct" stats are for the class they're playing, there are dozens of stat combinations in the game, and no clear guide as to which would be best, inside the game itself. Toughness and Vitality can help to take some of the edge off in a fight, let you take a couple more hits when you aren't loaded up with outside buffs. If the content is going to be casual friendly, it has to be accepting of many of the players "building wrong." That is the game the developers made.

However, I believe it's reasonable to expect and do some preparation before starting raiding.

I agree, for the hard mode, but for the easy mode, I expect at least some of the players to have no idea what they're doing. Hopefully it should be simple enough that one or two knowledgable players can tell them basically what to do, but I don't expect that everyone would have researched in advance. Again, this is meant to be casual, meant to be "pick up and play.*

I could not have done their jobs. Why? 1: a druid DPS, as I already said, is too low. Your equipment is healing oriented.

I meant more "in theory," obviously a druid should not be expected to pick up another role, I just meant "did you believe you had the skills that if you had been playing their character for them, you could have done their roles too?" I was just trying to guage whether the success was dependent on the role you were playing being easier than theirs.

It took around 1 hour and a half, but please remember that the number includes all the time spent waiting for the squad to fill, the time spent replacing members who left, and the time spent when I explained things in squad chat.

And I think that sounds good, for a hard mode run, but I think that to capture the casual players, the easy mode would need to be more around half-hour to 45 minutes for VG, including squad building time.

[Voltekka.2375]

@nia.4725 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:I don't know. Some of them were full ascended, some were not. But the thing is that equipment in GW2 does not mean that much. Sure, you'll see a big difference from rare to ascended, but we both know that the majority of 80 level characters have at least exotics -exotics are VERY, very easy to get.

Yeah, but not necessarily of the meta combinations for their class and the content. Let's say they're in exotics, but it's PVT, or just some random "close, but not right" combinations, because they didn't meta-build their class and just had what they had. Would that be good enough, not as the exception, but as the rule, and not for a team of experts, for a team of total newbs. Would they be able to complete the encounter alive and in time?

I didn't carry anyone, I didn't have the skills not the experience to do so. I also wasn't carried -I did my job as druid, not as well as I do right know of course, but well enough to heal my party and go to greens, which was my duty. So I did what I had to do, nothing more and nothing else.

Do you believe you could have done their jobs instead then, or just that the person with the druid job is able to carry their weight with less effort? If every member of the team had been no more experienced than you, would it have been successful?

Some months ago I joined a VG training group. They needed a druid. All but me were completely new to raids. Their DPS was extremely low, I saw 3k-4k DPS players. The other druid was kinda bad, too. The chronos were terrible -awful boon uptime, bad tanking (they got teleported more than once and more than twice). I stayed with them, though. We killed VG.

That was nice of you, how long did that take?

I don't know what PVT is.

Anyway. Don't you think it's extremely easy to get exotic equipment with the correct stats? What I mean with correct is: a DPS player who does not use toughness and vitality stats. Because toughness and vitality aren't going to hit anything, they are not damage oriented stats. The only stats that are difficult to get are chrono stats (commander or minstrel) and condi DPS stats (viper). Anything else can be geared just by doing open world PvE or even just buying right off the trading post. So why shouldn't a new raider do that? Off meta builds work, too. My raid leader raids sometimes with a power reaper. I use power herald sometimes, too. We also use heal firebrand (geared full minstrel). Yes, the boss can be beaten with an off meta comp, as long as you don't just pick anything.

However, I believe it's reasonable to expect and do some preparation before starting raiding. I think it's basic. Just take a look at your build, try to get the best equipment you can get, and try to know something about the boss. That's the minimum.

I could not have done their jobs. Why? 1: a druid DPS, as I already said, is too low. Your equipment is healing oriented. As a magi druid my power was the base number. As the current harrier druid I'm dealing around 2.5k DPS if I camp staff, around 3.5-4.5k if I swap to axe/warhorn. 2: a druid does not have toughness, so I couldn't have moved the boss. The boss would have never followed me. Would we have been suffessful with just noob raiders? It would have taken more time, but we would have been successful. One of our members geared a chrono few weeks later and we killed VG with her as tank.

It took around 1 hour and a half, but please remember that the number includes all the time spent waiting for the squad to fill, the time spent replacing members who left, and the time spent when I explained things in squad chat.

edit: I'll try to find the DPS log of that kill, if I still have it, when I arrive home. If I find it I'll give some info about the composition I had in that VG.

PVT: Power Vitality Toughness gear, aka "soldier's"

[Ohoni.6057]

@Voltekka.2375 said:Dunno, it kinda feels - to me at least- dishonest to make easy raid mode. Dishonest to those who worked hard for their rotations, for the time they have put into wiping again and again and again, for the cost in food +gear and for the resources they have put into everything. I do not raid, mind you. But it would feel that theyre being cheated on, being treated unfairly, when people put much less effort to get EXACTLY what others got through hard work. Yes, it is a videogame and all, but hard work is hard work, regardless. It just... Doesnt feel right.

Edit:The vote was, sadly, a misclick

I honestly don't see why. Nobody can take away the time and effort they put into it. There have been plenty of rewards in the game that were once earned one way, and later opened up to other options, or that once cost one price, and later became much cheaper. That's just the way of things. Just because the price of something was once one thing, doesn't mean that it must forever be that same price. That's just a silly way to design anything.

Nia was above describing his experiences playing raid encounters, that is what matters, the stories he has to tell, not the Li and magnetite he got for doing it.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:Anyway. Don't you think it's extremely easy to get exotic equipment with the correct stats? What I mean with correct is: a DPS player who does not use toughness and vitality stats.

The thing with casual players is, they probably aren't aware of what the "correct" stats are for the class they're playing, there are

dozens

of stat combinations in the game, and no clear guide as to which would be best,

inside

the game itself. Toughness and Vitality can help to take some of the edge off in a fight, let you take a couple more hits when you aren't loaded up with outside buffs. If the content is going to be casual friendly, it has to be accepting of many of the players "building wrong." That is the game the developers made.

The content intended to be casual-friendly does just this. It doesn't matter what kind of bad gear you're wearing. You can kill everything in anything. Luckily, the game was never meant to be casual-friendly everywhere. There were explorable dungeons which were intended to be hard - and for a while were. There were later fractals which scaled with their level, and the top tiers were never casual-friendly. So you're outright spreading misinformation here. The game ANet made always had its casual-friendly parts and its non-casual-friendly parts.

[Voltekka.2375]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:Dunno, it kinda feels - to me at least- dishonest to make easy raid mode. Dishonest to those who worked hard for their rotations, for the time they have put into wiping again and again and again, for the cost in food +gear and for the resources they have put into everything. I do not raid, mind you. But it would feel that theyre being cheated on, being treated unfairly, when people put much less effort to get EXACTLY what others got through hard work. Yes, it is a videogame and all, but hard work is hard work, regardless. It just... Doesnt feel right.

Edit:The vote was, sadly, a misclick

I honestly don't see why. Nobody can take away the time and effort they put into it. There have been plenty of rewards in the game that were once earned one way, and later opened up to other options, or that once cost one price, and later became much cheaper. That's just the way of things. Just because the price of something was once one thing, doesn't mean that it must

forever

be that same price. That's just a silly way to design anything.

Nia was above describing his experiences playing raid encounters,

that

is what matters, the stories he has to tell, not the Li and magnetite he got for doing it.

The feeling of reward, of accomplishment after hard work, is a driving force in humans. Nia was describing his/her experiences, all I can suggest is you try VG out yourself after maybe watching a few videos of the class you play. No matter how many stories of encounters someone tells, the real deal is in seeing it for yourself. that is what matters.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"blambidy.3216" said:If they just added a hard mode and everything would be the same. Then I don’t think it would effect the rest of the game. If no teir higher Teir. And the raids are still 10. Bosses more life, more defense and harder hits. And we went that way it couldn’t effect anyone. Just get that butt in there and try to kill it. XD. But it would take much longer then usual.

Just get higher rewards for finishing. Instead of finishing with 10 mags. You get 20. And instead of getting 3 mags for not completing, you get 0.

A developer replied on the subject of CMs (it's on reddit) link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8gpfac/the_game_have_never_been_better_and_still_i_play/dye2dsr/):

Speaking for Raids, I will say this much: the reason we don't allow CM to be repeatable is because we don't want to splinter the player base. Two different play modes will send all of the "elite" players to CM, leaving "normal" mode as less desirable. I'm not happy with how we originally introduced CM, and I continue to not be happy with how we implement it. There has to be a better way.I am looking into options for a more appealing alternative. There are a few ideas, some of which that have been proposed by the community, but it takes time to not just hem and haw over the decision (and get approvals from the powers that be), but also to properly implement it. It's not as simple as changing a line of code and BAM, it's all changed and ready to ship. It's thousands of content objects, potentially custom code, scripts that all need to interact properly, then doing this across all of the existing content, and testing it to find and fix dem bugs.All that to say: we hear you on the Raid CM front, and we're exploring options.

It's not a matter of debate if a "hard mode" (repeatable CMs) will splinter the community, because it will, there is no doubt about that. It's also rather clear from the post that implementing a "hard mode" is not a simple thing at all. Just had to sort this out. It's also interesting that they confirm they are discussing ideas to make a hard mode for the game, a proper one, not the one-time CMs. So a hard mode is indeed under consideration.To partially answer the thread's question: Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? The "hard" part is already under consideration so it's a definite "yes" to that.

[nia.4725]

@"Ohoni.6057" said: The thing with casual players is, they probably aren't aware of what the "correct" stats are for the class they're playing, there are dozens of stat combinations in the game, and no clear guide as to which would be best, inside the game itself. Toughness and Vitality can help to take some of the edge off in a fight, let you take a couple more hits when you aren't loaded up with outside buffs. If the content is going to be casual friendly, it has to be accepting of many of the players "building wrong." That is the game the developers made.

The first thing you say is very and sadly true. This is an issue I have pointed out previously, and I even gave some suggestions on how Anet could improve this situation, but almost everybody ignored my post and kept arguing and arguing : D Anyway yes, Anet should give players some information ingame. A player completely new to raids who does not know a thing about builds, stats or guides and don't know any raiders can have a hard time trying to raid. And that's not good. My suggestion was to add an NPC to the aerodrome (or something similar) that will explain basic things to new players, like what is a build, what is a raid, what type of content will they face when they go inside a raid wing, etc. I think it's necessary to give this kind of information.

About PVT: this touches a very important aspect of raids that everyone must learn: trust. You have to trust your allies. You will always have people dedicated to something in particular and you should trust them to do their job. And if they do not do their job, that's okay! Keep learning, let them have the time to learn. That means you should not get PVT, because your job is to do DPS. So you should choose DPS gear AND trust your druid to heal and keep you alive.

The thing about raids is that it isn't good to take things you wouldn't take if everyone were able to do their job. Something like "our heals are not very good, so I'll take PVT". No! Trust your squad and learn with them. This kind of behavior teaches bad habits and is perjudicial to learning itself.

While it's true the devs made a game where building wrong is enough to do a big part of the game (more like open world PvE), raids are meant and designed to test players and push them to seek out ways of improving and sharpening their skills. So, I don't think raids should make it possible to "build wrong" and be successful anyway (by building wrong I mean horrible things like PVT, not suboptimal stats like some marauder gear in a berserker class).

But now that we talk about this I've remembered a story my raid leader has told many times. He started raiding when raids were released. And he told me that his first VG kill was (obviously) horrible, as everyone in the group was completely new to raids like everyone else. He killed VG as Dragonhunter, going to greens and DPSing Vale Guardian using a LONGBOW. A longbow! And still he did it. I don't think that kill had something like good builds, good strat, good composition, good boons, etc.

I agree, for the hard mode, but for the easy mode, I expect at least some of the players to have no idea what they're doing. Hopefully it should be simple enough that one or two knowledgable players can tell them basically what to do, but I don't expect that everyone would have researched in advance. Again, this is meant to be casual, meant to be "pick up and play.*

Well, I did have idea of what I was doing, but the rest of the group didn't have any. I remember the guy who had the tag didn't even know what they should ask for in the LFG, we had to tell him "write this and that in the lfg". And this is very a common thing in raid trainings. In fact your description matches completely that VG: there were one or two players who told them what to do, the others didn't know almost anything. They were casuals who were trying to get a raid kill. The same applies to a Samarog training group I joined last week. As the commander told me when we got the kill, the majority of the group were completely new. For what I saw, I think there were only 3 more or less experienced players, including me. We got the kill FIRST TRY. Yes. First try. I was astonished.

I meant more "in theory," obviously a druid should not be expected to pick up another role, I just meant "did you believe you had the skills that if you had been playing their character for them, you could have done their roles too?" I was just trying to guage whether the success was dependent on the role you were playing being easier than theirs.

No, I did not have the skills to play all roles. I could have played DPS, but not mesmer -I geared my mesmer one month after starting raiding. Was my role easier than theirs? Well, hell not. In Vale Guardian the big roles are mesmer and druid. Playing druid isn't easy when you start raiding, because you need to have eyes everywhere, and this is the challenge for druids in VG -you need to have an eye on all the group since you have to heal them, but you also must have an eye on green circles because you can't miss any.

And I think that sounds good, for a hard mode run, but I think that to capture the casual players, the easy mode would need to be more around half-hour to 45 minutes for VG, including squad building time.

See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.

Btw, I'm a woman, so I'm a she : )

[Astralporing.1957]

@nia.4725 said:See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.1.5h for a first kill is marvelous. The static i was in took well over 50 hours and 2+ months of attempts before first VG kill (with several member changes over that time). It took at least one more month before the group was able to repeat that achievement on more consistent basis. And we started all having the meta builds and ascended gear, as well as knowing what the mechanics are from guides and players that were more experienced. Some of the runs did include those experienced players, by the way, which did speed up the whole learning process. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if we were really starting from zero.

That is the barrier of entry i am speaking about.

[Feanor.2358]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@nia.4725 said:See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.1.5h for a first kill is marvelous. The static i was in took well over 50 hours and 2+ months of attempts before first VG kill (with several member changes over that time). It took at least one more month before the group was able to repeat that achievement on more consistent basis. And we started all having the meta builds and ascended gear, as well as knowing what the mechanics are from guides and players that were more experienced. Some of the runs did include those experienced players, by the way, which did speed up the whole learning process. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if we were really starting from zero.

That

is the barrier of entry i am speaking about.

This is far too much time spent. I'd guess the players in your group didn't care about proper builds and role assignments. It is the only way I can imagine it taking that long. My first VG clear took two sessions, one week apart of each other and maybe about 3-4 hrs. True, we did get a more experienced player to tank for us, but it got it via the LFG, so you could have done the same. And none of the other players were a raider back then.

[nia.4725]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@nia.4725 said:See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.1.5h for a first kill is marvelous. The static i was in took well over 50 hours and 2+ months of attempts before first VG kill (with several member changes over that time). It took at least one more month before the group was able to repeat that achievement on more consistent basis. And we started all having the meta builds and ascended gear, as well as knowing what the mechanics are from guides and players that were more experienced. Some of the runs did include those experienced players, by the way, which did speed up the whole learning process. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if we were really starting from zero.

That

is the barrier of entry i am speaking about.

This is insane and its cause can't be raids. I can remember my former guild leader saying it took his static around 12 days to be able to beat VG when VG was NEW. NEW,. No static should need so much time to kill a starter boss when they have good builds and mechanics and blabla.

[Rhiannon.1726]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"nia.4725" said:See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.1.5h for a first kill is marvelous. The static i was in took well over 50 hours and 2+ months of attempts before first VG kill (with several member changes over that time). It took at least one more month before the group was able to repeat that achievement on more consistent basis. And we started all having the meta builds and ascended gear, as well as knowing what the mechanics are from guides and players that were more experienced. Some of the runs did include those experienced players, by the way, which did speed up the whole learning process. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if we were really starting from zero.

That

is the barrier of entry i am speaking about.

This is far too much time spent. I'd guess the players in your group didn't care about proper builds and role assignments. It is the only way I can imagine it taking

that

long. My first VG clear took two sessions, one week apart of each other and maybe about 3-4 hrs. True, we did get a more experienced player to tank for us, but it got it via the LFG, so you could have done the same. And none of the other players were a raider back then.

When did you start raiding?

The guild I'm in got the first VG kill on januray 10th 2016 (raid release was ca. mid november 2015). I think we had a break over the holidays. We had ca. 6 poeple who where there on nearly every attempt and the other members were changing and they have been there maybe every second or third week. So Astralporings experience is not that unique.

Keep in mind that at the early raid time, there weren't many guides and no meta benchmarks. It took some time before the chrono/rev group composition was established. Poeple were also busy to farm the new HoT masteries and had something else to do than to get the new meta gear. Rev was completly new for everyone and poeple also didn't have experience with special roles like druid and chrono.

The same guild that needed weeks for VG and again weeks for Gorseval (we failed countless times a ca. 1%) killed Matthias in 1,5 hours (5 of us have seen him before once or twice with pugs) and Xera in ca. 3 hours (also 5 have seen her maybe once or twice with pugs).People adapted to the harder content, got decent builds, rotations and gear... Guilds that did dungeon speed runs already had that, but the casual pve guild that started raiding had a high learning curve to get to a similar level.

Therefore I've asked "when you started". Raiding was so much more difficult at the beginning. Nowadays you can join e.g. a training run for w4 and kill 3 bosses on the first evening (with experienced leaders).

[Sephylon.4938]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:They

could

be, but they aren't necessarily so.

Yes that's why I said they

can

the same, not they

are

the same.

Ban you understand my frustration that you do nto seem to be absorbing the things I am saying?

Which is why we need

specific

examples. To solve this misunderstanding once and for all.

Obviously there is a lot of variety in that range, just as there is variety between current raid encounters, but I would hope that we can agree that this would set a higher bar than "killing moas using autoattack."

Maybe then the best option is to tackle the easiest Raid encounters first, those that might not even need an easy mode to begin with.Do we need an easy mode of any of the raid non-boss events? Vale Guardian adds, Spirit Woods, Bandit Camp (Sabetha pre)Do we need an easy mode for Escort and Trio?Do we need an easy mode for Mursaat Overseer?

That's why I sarted my thread to begin with. Sad to see some good ideas glossed over in favour of the same old song and dance there :(

[Sephylon.4938]

@nia.4725 hope you don't mind but I added your suggestion to the 1st page of my thread. If you have time, would you mind posting the specifics of it?

[nia.4725]

@Sephylon.4938 said:@"nia.4725" hope you don't mind but I added your suggestion to the 1st page of my thread. If you have time, would you mind posting the specifics of it?

Sure, but since I do not agree on the need of creating easy mode raids I'd prefer if you please could remark that.

The full post is here, it contains more suggestions: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/493388#Comment_493388

[Astralporing.1957]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@nia.4725 said:See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.1.5h for a first kill is marvelous. The static i was in took well over 50 hours and 2+ months of attempts before first VG kill (with several member changes over that time). It took at least one more month before the group was able to repeat that achievement on more consistent basis. And we started all having the meta builds and ascended gear, as well as knowing what the mechanics are from guides and players that were more experienced. Some of the runs did include those experienced players, by the way, which did speed up the whole learning process. I shudder to think how long it would have taken if we were really starting from zero.

That

is the barrier of entry i am speaking about.

This is far too much time spent. I'd guess the players in your group didn't care about proper builds and role assignments. It is the only way I can imagine it taking

that

long.

I believe i did mention all had the proper builds and gear, did i not?

And we started all having the meta builds and ascended gear, as well as knowing what the mechanics are from guides and players that were more experienced.Yep, sure i did.

My first VG clear took two sessions, one week apart of each other and maybe about 3-4 hrs. True, we did get a more experienced player to tank for us, but it got it via the LFG, so you could have done the same. And none of the other players were a raider back then.Then all i can say is, lucky you.

The main problem was that constant failing, failing and failing again wore people out, which meant people kept leaving, and we had to replace them. Thus, we constantly needed to teach new players from the start again and again. And since everyone was new, it was hard to actually get used to the mechanics. When you wiped you often didn't really know if it was your mistake, or someone else that started the problem, because when everyone was making mistakes, it was too chaotic to follow it all.

[Feanor.2358]

@Astralporing.1957 said:The main problem was that constant failing, failing and failing again wore people out, which meant people kept leaving, and we had to replace them. Thus, we constantly needed to teach new players from the start again and again. And since everyone was new, it was hard to actually get used to the mechanics. When you wiped you often didn't really know if it was your mistake, or someone else that started the problem, because when everyone was making mistakes, it was too chaotic to follow it all.

That's why training guilds exist now.

[blambidy.3216]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"blambidy.3216" said:If they just added a hard mode and everything would be the same. Then I don’t think it would effect the rest of the game. If no teir higher Teir. And the raids are still 10. Bosses more life, more defense and harder hits. And we went that way it couldn’t effect anyone. Just get that butt in there and try to kill it. XD. But it would take much longer then usual.

Just get higher rewards for finishing. Instead of finishing with 10 mags. You get 20. And instead of getting 3 mags for not completing, you get 0.

A developer replied on the subject of CMs (it's on reddit) link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8gpfac/the_game_have_never_been_better_and_still_i_play/dye2dsr/

):

Speaking for Raids, I will say this much: the reason we don't allow CM to be repeatable is because we don't want to splinter the player base. Two different play modes will send all of the "elite" players to CM, leaving "normal" mode as less desirable. I'm not happy with how we originally introduced CM, and I continue to not be happy with how we implement it. There has to be a better way.I am looking into options for a more appealing alternative. There are a few ideas, some of which that have been proposed by the community, but it takes time to not just hem and haw over the decision (and get approvals from the powers that be), but also to properly implement it. It's not as simple as changing a line of code and BAM, it's all changed and ready to ship. It's thousands of content objects, potentially custom code, scripts that all need to interact properly, then doing this across all of the existing content, and testing it to find and fix dem bugs.All that to say: we hear you on the Raid CM front, and we're exploring options.

It's not a matter of debate if a "hard mode" (repeatable CMs) will splinter the community, because it

will

, there is no doubt about that. It's also rather clear from the post that implementing a "hard mode" is not a simple thing at all. Just had to sort this out. It's also interesting that they confirm they are discussing ideas to make a hard mode for the game, a proper one, not the one-time CMs. So a hard mode is indeed under consideration.To partially answer the thread's question: Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? The "hard" part is already under consideration so it's a definite "yes" to that.

Well if they are putting that into consideration, I’m going to have to be prepared to get into those hard modes. Agreed though. It will change the community, and hopefully there are still relaxed raid guilds as there are now. Even though it’s toxic it’s better to find a raid group to be away from the lfg toxicity.

What they will add, I have no idea. But my hopes if there is hard mode, adding 15-20 people would be a more relaxed community. Then say adding a new teir, or leaving the raid still as 10. With 15-20. Or 30. You get much more options to bring a group. Cause if we’re stuck with 10, there will still be selecting classes over other to be most effective. So that might be a positive if hard mode does happen.

[nia.4725]

@blambidy.3216 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@blambidy.3216 said:If they just added a hard mode and everything would be the same. Then I don’t think it would effect the rest of the game. If no teir higher Teir. And the raids are still 10. Bosses more life, more defense and harder hits. And we went that way it couldn’t effect anyone. Just get that butt in there and try to kill it. XD. But it would take much longer then usual.

Just get higher rewards for finishing. Instead of finishing with 10 mags. You get 20. And instead of getting 3 mags for not completing, you get 0.

A developer replied on the subject of CMs (it's on reddit) link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8gpfac/the_game_have_never_been_better_and_still_i_play/dye2dsr/

):

Speaking for Raids, I will say this much: the reason we don't allow CM to be repeatable is because we don't want to splinter the player base. Two different play modes will send all of the "elite" players to CM, leaving "normal" mode as less desirable. I'm not happy with how we originally introduced CM, and I continue to not be happy with how we implement it. There has to be a better way.I am looking into options for a more appealing alternative. There are a few ideas, some of which that have been proposed by the community, but it takes time to not just hem and haw over the decision (and get approvals from the powers that be), but also to properly implement it. It's not as simple as changing a line of code and BAM, it's all changed and ready to ship. It's thousands of content objects, potentially custom code, scripts that all need to interact properly, then doing this across all of the existing content, and testing it to find and fix dem bugs.All that to say: we hear you on the Raid CM front, and we're exploring options.

It's not a matter of debate if a "hard mode" (repeatable CMs) will splinter the community, because it

will

, there is no doubt about that. It's also rather clear from the post that implementing a "hard mode" is not a simple thing at all. Just had to sort this out. It's also interesting that they confirm they are discussing ideas to make a hard mode for the game, a proper one, not the one-time CMs. So a hard mode is indeed under consideration.To partially answer the thread's question: Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? The "hard" part is already under consideration so it's a definite "yes" to that.

Well if they are putting that into consideration, I’m going to have to be prepared to get into those hard modes. Agreed though. It will change the community, and hopefully there are still relaxed raid guilds as there are now. Even though it’s toxic it’s better to find a raid group to be away from the lfg toxicity.

What they will add, I have no idea. But my hopes if there is hard mode, adding 15-20 people would be a more relaxed community. Then say adding a new teir, or leaving the raid still as 10. With 15-20. Or 30. You get much more options to bring a group. Cause if we’re stuck with 10, there will still be selecting classes over other to be most effective. So that might be a positive if hard mode does happen.

Maybe I'm missing something but Jason wasn't talking about doing more hard modes or anything like that. He was just adressing a very commented issue in the raiding community: the current challenge motes do not encourage repeating the CM, because they give no rewards at all, and the raiding team is considering changing that.

[maddoctor.2738]

@nia.4725 said:

@blambidy.3216 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@blambidy.3216 said:If they just added a hard mode and everything would be the same. Then I don’t think it would effect the rest of the game. If no teir higher Teir. And the raids are still 10. Bosses more life, more defense and harder hits. And we went that way it couldn’t effect anyone. Just get that butt in there and try to kill it. XD. But it would take much longer then usual.

Just get higher rewards for finishing. Instead of finishing with 10 mags. You get 20. And instead of getting 3 mags for not completing, you get 0.

A developer replied on the subject of CMs (it's on reddit) link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8gpfac/the_game_have_never_been_better_and_still_i_play/dye2dsr/

):

Speaking for Raids, I will say this much: the reason we don't allow CM to be repeatable is because we don't want to splinter the player base. Two different play modes will send all of the "elite" players to CM, leaving "normal" mode as less desirable. I'm not happy with how we originally introduced CM, and I continue to not be happy with how we implement it. There has to be a better way.I am looking into options for a more appealing alternative. There are a few ideas, some of which that have been proposed by the community, but it takes time to not just hem and haw over the decision (and get approvals from the powers that be), but also to properly implement it. It's not as simple as changing a line of code and BAM, it's all changed and ready to ship. It's thousands of content objects, potentially custom code, scripts that all need to interact properly, then doing this across all of the existing content, and testing it to find and fix dem bugs.All that to say: we hear you on the Raid CM front, and we're exploring options.

It's not a matter of debate if a "hard mode" (repeatable CMs) will splinter the community, because it

will

, there is no doubt about that. It's also rather clear from the post that implementing a "hard mode" is not a simple thing at all. Just had to sort this out. It's also interesting that they confirm they are discussing ideas to make a hard mode for the game, a proper one, not the one-time CMs. So a hard mode is indeed under consideration.To partially answer the thread's question: Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? The "hard" part is already under consideration so it's a definite "yes" to that.

Well if they are putting that into consideration, I’m going to have to be prepared to get into those hard modes. Agreed though. It will change the community, and hopefully there are still relaxed raid guilds as there are now. Even though it’s toxic it’s better to find a raid group to be away from the lfg toxicity.

What they will add, I have no idea. But my hopes if there is hard mode, adding 15-20 people would be a more relaxed community. Then say adding a new teir, or leaving the raid still as 10. With 15-20. Or 30. You get much more options to bring a group. Cause if we’re stuck with 10, there will still be selecting classes over other to be most effective. So that might be a positive if hard mode does happen.

Maybe I'm missing something but Jason wasn't talking about doing more hard modes or anything like that. He was just adressing a very commented issue in the raiding community: the current challenge motes do not encourage repeating the CM, because they give no rewards at all, and the raiding team is considering changing that.

That's how I understood it too, it's more like making the current CMs repeatable than creating an entirely new game mode.

[Sephylon.4938]

@"nia.4725"After reading you're suggestions, I'd say I agree with all of them and those, especially a way for people to practice mechanics. That is why I originally ask for easy mode, though as the discussion progressed, other more interesting ways of reaching this goal were brought up. One of my favorite ones was the addition of raid mechanics to the training golem. Another of which is this idea:

This maaay be a bit far off, but what if, and bear me out, instead of reworking vg, we rework the pre event that leads to it? Currently I find that the preevent, which is supposed to teach the mechanic, ends far too soon. Additionally, it is usually done while waiting for the lfg to fill even in training runs (I've done this myself). What if instead of 3 guardians lined up, we have to walk to the arena and see the pylons powering the barrier. As we try to disable the pylon, unstable energy is released and attacks us in the form of the guardian with a colour matching the pylon. If the group only deactivates 1 pylon, the 1/3 lava floor will be active. 2/3 if 2 were deactivated, and add the bullet hell if all 3 were deactivated at once. We could also relocate the respawn point to be under glenna, or right before the arena. Move the ley rift there or 1 of the pact members and give it an option to reset the pylons as long as vg hasn't heen summoned or killed. Thoughts on this?

as discussed with maddoctor.2738, buffing the bosses could prove to be counter productive and serve more to punish vets, than help newbies, but he did suggest allowing us to control which pre event boss we spawn, which lines up with " As we try to disable the pylon, unstable energy is released and attacks us in the form of the guardian with a colour matching the pylon.". And he voiced concerns about it still being able to be cleared prior to filling, which I feel is addressed by "Move the ley rift there or 1 of the pact members and give it an option to reset the pylons as long as vg hasn't heen summoned or killed."

[nia.4725]

@Sephylon.4938 said:@"nia.4725"After reading you're suggestions, I'd say I agree with all of them and those, especially a way for people to practice mechanics. That is why I originally ask for easy mode, though as the discussion progressed, other more interesting ways of reaching this goal were brought up. One of my favorite ones was the addition of raid mechanics to the training golem. Another of which is this idea:

This maaay be a bit far off, but what if, and bear me out, instead of reworking vg, we rework the pre event that leads to it? Currently I find that the preevent, which is supposed to teach the mechanic, ends far too soon. Additionally, it is usually done while waiting for the lfg to fill even in training runs (I've done this myself). What if instead of 3 guardians lined up, we have to walk to the arena and see the pylons powering the barrier. As we try to disable the pylon, unstable energy is released and attacks us in the form of the guardian with a colour matching the pylon. If the group only deactivates 1 pylon, the 1/3 lava floor will be active. 2/3 if 2 were deactivated, and add the bullet hell if all 3 were deactivated at once. We could also relocate the respawn point to be under glenna, or right before the arena. Move the ley rift there or 1 of the pact members and give it an option to reset the pylons as long as vg hasn't heen summoned or killed. Thoughts on this?

as discussed with maddoctor.2738, buffing the bosses could prove to be counter productive and serve more to punish vets, than help newbies, but he did suggest allowing us to control which pre event boss we spawn, which lines up with " As we try to disable the pylon, unstable energy is released and attacks us in the form of the guardian with a colour matching the pylon.". And he voiced concerns about it still being able to be cleared prior to filling, which I feel is addressed by "Move the ley rift there or 1 of the pact members and give it an option to reset the pylons as long as vg hasn't heen summoned or killed."

Buff, I think it's a bad idea.

First of all, I think it would burn players out A LOT. Raiders don't like pre-events, they try to avoid them as much as possible to the point of trying to get boss openers. My static tries to do VG and then get a Gorseval opener in order to skip doing the Gorseval pre. Everyone is super happy if someone in squad is able to open Xera directly, without needing to do Twisted Castle. So a longer pre-Vale Guardian would be horrible. We even get very frustrated because the Dhuum pre is too long and it's completely and horribly tedious to do it again and again and again each wipe, each week.

Yeah, it could help newbies, so maybe it could be an option. Like, I want to do the pre, spawn the pre. That would be okay and it would help newbies get used to VG's mechanics. But reworking the pre for everyone is terrible. Also, raids are 17 bosses, not just Vale Guardian, and devs can't make a "teaching pre" for each boss. It's too time and resource consuming and, in my opinion, it would erase the purpose of raids. I personally do not find any problem in struggling a little until you get the mechanics -I remember when I got into W5, the day of the release. Soulless Horror almost instawiped us, because we didn't know a thing. The process of going into the boss and trying to guess its mechanics was very, very fun. Nowadays though, bosses are completely studied and you can find a great number of guides. So, do newbies really need an exhaustive pre who will show them all the mechanics they will have to face later on? I honestly don't think so.

The problem I see is that while some people are fine with this kind of ideas, some others just want a toned down boss and aren't interested in the real boss. This makes a difference between those players. Some just feel it's too difficult to get into raids and would like help to get started, some feel it's too difficult and are not interested in learning to be able to play at the level the current raids require. This idea you have shared here will please the first group, but won't work for those who just want cheesed raids, and thus the problem and the discussion will continue forever and ever.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:Anyway. Don't you think it's extremely easy to get exotic equipment with the correct stats? What I mean with correct is: a DPS player who does not use toughness and vitality stats.

The thing with casual players is, they probably aren't aware of what the "correct" stats are for the class they're playing, there are

dozens

of stat combinations in the game, and no clear guide as to which would be best,

inside

the game itself. Toughness and Vitality can help to take some of the edge off in a fight, let you take a couple more hits when you aren't loaded up with outside buffs. If the content is going to be casual friendly, it has to be accepting of many of the players "building wrong." That is the game the developers made.

The content intended to be casual-friendly does just this. It doesn't matter what kind of bad gear you're wearing. You can kill everything in anything. Luckily, the game was never meant to be casual-friendly everywhere. There were explorable dungeons which were intended to be hard - and for a while were. There were later fractals which scaled with their level, and the top tiers were never casual-friendly. So you're outright spreading misinformation here. The game ANet made always had its casual-friendly parts and its non-casual-friendly parts.

Dungeons and lower tier Fractals were always casual friendly. I was there from the start. I cleared all the Fractals in the first weeks. Yes, there were elitists that would insist on meta builds to make their runs faster, but you could still fairly easily clear them even without those meta builds.

@Voltekka.2375 said:The feeling of reward, of accomplishment after hard work, is a driving force in humans. Nia was describing his/her experiences, all I can suggest is you try VG out yourself after maybe watching a few videos of the class you play. No matter how many stories of encounters someone tells, the real deal is in seeing it for yourself. that is what matters.

I respect that what you get out of the game is what you get out of it, but I ask that you respect that I know better than you what makes me happy. I've been playing games for decades now, of all kinds, I know what experiences I enjoy, and what I do not. I do NOT enjoy pounding my head against a wall until I overcome it. What little joy I get at finally ending up on the other side will always be drowned out by the annoyance it took to get there. That is how I felt about getting the Ascension, that is how I would feel if I earned the Envoy armor from the current raids, and I do not want to put myself through that process again. I don't want to harm raids for those that enjoy them, but at the same time I feel that there are ways to make them more accessible to other players without in any way harming the existing raids., and I will continue to pursue that goal.

@"nia.4725" said:The first thing you say is very and sadly true. This is an issue I have pointed out previously, and I even gave some suggestions on how Anet could improve this situation, but almost everybody ignored my post and kept arguing and arguing

Well, to be fair, it would be slightly off topic to this thread, but it's definitely worth discussing elsewhere. Personally I wish that they would just adopt the PvP model, where armor became purely cosmetic and you could just swap stats at will using an "amulet" style system. That would make "meta builds" much more accessible, since if someone came in with the wrong build, you could just say "open the hero panel and swap to Viper's" and that would be the end of it.

About PVT: this touches a very important aspect of raids that everyone must learn: trust. You have to trust your allies. You will always have people dedicated to something in particular and you should trust them to do their job.

In raids, sure. But most casuals do not intend to spend all their time in raids. They do not want to buy, or carry a full set of armor that they'll only be using in raids. If they are going to acquire a set of good armor, especially if it's Ascended, they are going to want "everyday" armor, and if they spend most of their time doing solo content, they are going to want armor that supports their solo play style.

See above for the casual thing. I don't think though that 1'5h is too much for a kill. In fact no one there complained about that, they were just super happy because they had their first kill. No one cared about the time spent on it.

For the current raids, no, that's a good item and they should be happy about it, they knew going in to expect that, or much more. But my point is, for the mode to actually catch on with casuals, that can't be the expectation, casuals don't have time for that. The easy mode would have to provide much lower average clear times.

Btw, I'm a woman, so I'm a she : )

Understood, no harm intended.

This is insane and its cause can't be raids. I can remember my former guild leader saying it took his static around 12 days to be able to beat VG when VG was NEW. NEW,. No static should need so much time to kill a starter boss when they have good builds and mechanics and blabla.

It just goes to show that individual experiences vary, and what works for one player may not work for another.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:Anyway. Don't you think it's extremely easy to get exotic equipment with the correct stats? What I mean with correct is: a DPS player who does not use toughness and vitality stats.

The thing with casual players is, they probably aren't aware of what the "correct" stats are for the class they're playing, there are

dozens

of stat combinations in the game, and no clear guide as to which would be best,

inside

the game itself. Toughness and Vitality can help to take some of the edge off in a fight, let you take a couple more hits when you aren't loaded up with outside buffs. If the content is going to be casual friendly, it has to be accepting of many of the players "building wrong." That is the game the developers made.

The content intended to be casual-friendly does just this. It doesn't matter what kind of bad gear you're wearing. You can kill everything in anything. Luckily, the game was never meant to be casual-friendly everywhere. There were explorable dungeons which were intended to be hard - and for a while were. There were later fractals which scaled with their level, and the top tiers were never casual-friendly. So you're outright spreading misinformation here. The game ANet made always had its casual-friendly parts and its non-casual-friendly parts.

Dungeons and lower tier Fractals were

always

casual friendly. I was there from the start. I cleared all the Fractals in the first weeks. Yes, there were elitists that would insist on meta builds to make their runs

faster,

but you could still fairly easily clear them even without those meta builds.

I wouldnt class your experience with the content as a clear indication that it was intended to be casual friendly.

Even these days, stuff like Arah and even CoE is hard when people dont pay particular attention or have non optimized builds.

Not to mention its basically the same argument that people here use for raiding. "its easy for me thus its casual friendly".

[Ohoni.6057]

@"FrizzFreston.5290" said:I wouldnt class your experience with the content as a clear indication that it was intended to be casual friendly.

"Intent" is meaningless. It's quite possible that the developers never intended for Dungeons or lower tier Fractals to be casual friendly. All that actually matter is what we actually got, and what we actually got was that they were. That is the structure that this game's community was built upon, the people who liked it stayed and called their friends over, the people who didn't like that left, and the game went on for at least three years like that, and still mostly relies on the audience that resulted from that reality.

Not to mention its basically the same argument that people here use for raiding. "its easy for me thus its casual friendly".

Except that when people apply it to raids, it's either disingenuous or strongly misguided, because that has never applied to raids, and often those same people, in another part of the conversation, will respond with something along the lines of "shut up, raids are meant to be challenging content for hardcore players!," which really raises suspicion about their earlier "raids are already easy casual content" claims. . .